Not sure how closely anyone has been following along with this, but given the sheer amount of misinformation that seems to have spread amongst the DJ community around this takeover (See Pioneers latest social media posts about Sonoma, and the requests for a Serato update being asked for) I thought id have a poke around on the relevant websites.
Here is the latest document that was shared a few days back, looks like despite the blind assertions of many people online, this hasn’t gone through, and there is still a quite bitter dispute being argued out between the parties. The NZ government have a whole web page dedicated to it with some statements and a record of documents handed over so far.
Trying to be as neutral as possible, i think both sides have been quite petty in some of their responses… but also there does seem to be some quite flaky/shady practises coming to light around how Alpha and Serato wanted to push the takeover through without following processes.
Their reference to the party mix devices being advertised as working with other software made me laugh out loud too, as if those 2 devices are the benchmark of the DJ industry or something.
Serato are also taking the mick a bit with their statement around their software being open to any midi controller on the market, making out like every consumer of their products has the knowledge and skills to remap controllers willy nilly, or even want to (i know i dont)
oh, that is obvious even though this document is one-sided
What I love the most is all the L’s that inMusic is forced to admit here:
"ATC’s market dominance in DJ hardware and its co-dominance withSerato with respect to DJ software made the proposed acquisition clearly untenable"
"inMusic had found little traction with convincing venues to install its equipment on their own because the venues believed that performers would not want to use inMusic equipment. By paying major DJs to include Denon DJ equipment in their riders, inMusic believed it would force venues to purchase their equipment and then DJs would use the equipment, like it and purchase it. Despite inMusic’s DJ hardware earning rave reviews, some of which Serato cited (see theSubmission at [18]), the campaign was largely a failure, proving again that ATC cannot be displaced, irrespective of inMusic selling compelling products at attractive price points and marketed by top DJs."
“However, neither inMusic’s promotional activities nor positive reviews have increased its hardware market share against ATC or diminished in any way Serato’s dominance in the DJ software market. This is also supported by the fact that ATC only licences Serato in addition to its own rekordbox. Neither inMusic nor ATC can afford to stop paying Serato licence fees because Serato is ultimately what the customers want.”
Yeah and again that was largely obvious too wasn’t it… i guess as consumers we either have to back iNmusic up in the hope they can keep adding value to the market or admit defeat and let this takeover happen, giving more dominance to Pioneer/Alpha who will either do the right thing for their customers or not.
One thing is for certain, i dont like the look of a world without the likes of inmusic pushing the evolution forward.
Just on the documents one sidedness, thats because its inmusic’s response, you can find the other documents online with the initial Serato case statement they are responding to.
I hope InMusic battles on it would be disappointing for InMusic to roll over, there isn’t really anyone else to take on Pioneer at present. Maybe InMusic should collab with Algorithm.
If djay pro is now as good as the reviewers say it is, maybe Inmusic should focus on them maybe more. Or even buy them. Seems mojax would jump over to djay pro if it was more integrated with other equipment. Get the screens of the sc6000 working in harmony with djay pro. That might give a boost to denon players. Then in the future have denon players work fully standalone with djay pro without a phone, iPad or mac. And get numark and Rane also in this eco system.
So the users of previous Denon equipment still can use djay pro with iPad etc and the future players are on steroids. Stems will be the future for many dj’s and the perfect beatgridding of the new djay pro is such a plus and time saver. If I was inmusic I knew where to put my money in. Take the loss of engine dj and integrate it with djay pro.
And if the deal serato with pioneer is going on, then it will be a win win for inmusic and djay pro. Only reloop might not be happy. Inmusic might to buy them too.